Second painting work in progress

Trying to paint this one quickly with bigger brushes and longer strokes when possible and am going to try to avoid blending too on the leaves.. The canvas is also much smaller than the picture I printed so I downsized a bunch and made some other changes when drawing which made things a bit more challenging this time.

It doesn't seem like I can get the green colours with the normal blue and yellow so I'm going to pick up something stronger to help with that!

eclectic ellipses eclipsed the otherwise beautiful drawing. That's a lot of texture in your ground, I worry that it may detract from the overall painting if you're going for a "slicky smooth" texture for the leaves. I think the background color will work. The shadows ' values look good so far. Good luck and keep at it.

@movealonghome I wouldn't worry too much about that, more artists and their clients like it a lot these most recent days. I'm sure your painting will turn out quite well, and may not be so noticeable. And now you know that you have choice between textured/rough and smooth.

For titanium white and burnt umber i have the winsor newton artist oils (because theyre cheap) but for the other ones I'm using the cheaper winton brand (which only cost 6 dollars a tube regardless of colour) and i honestly can't tell the difference in quality or anything. I actually hate the brown the most because it smells so awful every time i open the jar.

The red and blue winton also mix up to a very nice consistency with the sdm

Seeing your reference photo and first update, I see those test marks on the photo, which reminds me that I managed to put a few dots on my photo, forgot to wipe them off, then later painted them, as though they were original. Watch out for that.

Nice looking painting so far, looking forward to seeing it progress. My experience with student grade paints (Georgian) was not great. They looked ok in the tube but did not mix well. I put it down to too many additives/fillers and mixtures of pigments. I noticed a huge difference when I moved to single pigment artist grade paints - suddenly I could get beautiful greys and browns, rather than milky mud.

Roxy and Paul - I obviously don't have much experience with different types and qualities of paint. Once I'm experienced enough that I think I'll be able to tell the difference between artist and student grade paint I'll have to try using purely artist grade. But for some colours, like Phthalo Blue, which you only need a small amount of to mix in with other colours, I wonder if it will ever be worth it to spend $50 on a tube of artist grade compared to a $5 tube of student grade.

When the paint seemed clumpy I just added more SDM and kept stirring and it smoothed out.

A question for you - does burnt umber always smell so rancid? You'd think it would just smell like cloves from all of the clove oil but what I'm experiencing is something different

What's wrong with axle grease? Gumbracher oils smelled. Winsor & Newton Artists' Oils (the limit of my experience) have a little but not too bad. Nothing should smell rancid. Maybe if you got some bad venice turps?Regardless of what the smell (or taste) is.... if you can smell them at all you don't have enough ventilation. I'm not one of those with such an acute sense of smell so maybe that's not 100% true in all cases but aside from the clove oil while you're mixing you should have enough air moving so the odors are barely noticeable. The trick is to get the breeze without drying out the palette. I have a lung condition so I go outside to do all my prep work and mixing SDM where I still have a fan blowing across my face between my breathing zone and any of the open containers or wet supports. Some people wear a mask but without proper ventilation masks are of little help.

Apart from a rather pleasant mild clove aroma none of my paints smell (mainly Art Spectrum, but now Langridge). In fact I use a spare room to paint in, and you wouldn't even know I was there. Not sure why your umber should be so pongy. Do you know if its the paint that stinks, or the medium, or maybe some interaction between the two?

I use W&N artist oil paint, and don't have problem with bad scent before and after mixing with slow dry medium and I have a very good nose. It is possible a manufacturer defect, in any case it is best to have very good ventilation. Just me, but if my paint smelled bad I probably wouldn't use it, for fear it won't perform up to par for painting. If there is a hidden defect now, it will also show later somehow, somewhere in the painting. Just a reminder, if trying to get results that Mark gets and teaches with us in oil painting, it is best to follow his example as closely as possible for optimum results, no matter what level you may be at.

@movealonghome , nice going, looking good. I would like to suggest reading again what Martin Crane wrote in the "EDGES" post by Mike Derby. He nailed it. Also gleen what Mr. David Leffel talks about in his still life video concerning edges; These thoughts can really make one think while creating a very nice piece of work.

Critic Alert - What's going on with that top leaf. It appears to have an appendage on the left. It may actually be there in life but it is a distraction and a "false-focal" point. Other than that this is really well done. leaves and details and shadows all very good.

The back radius is much greater than the front radius. RADICAL lol. the angled verticals of the main pot and the depth of the lower tray make it hard for my eyes to gauge the ellipse. Cut out a paper circle the approximate diameter/width of the tray then hold it between you and the drawing tilting it till you get the desired angle. Visualizing it that way may help you get it. Mark's free instructions on drawing show you how to plot points to draw from. and this early blog may help too but that's before you start your next drawing. You are doing so well but maybe you were in hurry. Slow down -that's why we use slow-dry medium... so we can slow down.http://blog.drawmixpaint.com/2014/05/drawing-simplified-points-angles-curves.html

I did some colour checking but i also had a lot of "it's close enough" type moments when the colours really weren't that close lol. Probably because i knew the reference photo print didnt have the best colours anyway. Glad it still worked out!

@BOB73 17 years ago, when I was 13, I took some acrylic & watercolour painting lessons and probably did about 12 paintings during that time. I can't say that anything I learned back then is really helping me now as I completely forget it all! Maybe a bit of the skill I developed has stuck around, although I really think spending a couple months preparing and getting set up and then following the DMP method more or less is what has made it possible for me to produce decent work

It's also helping to analyze the work of others' to learn from.

While painting this current one I've been looking at the art of Jeffrey T. Larson (he has a great gallery on his site - amazing skill), including this one

I think most people who have found their way here have at least "dabbled" in acry/oil or I noticed some from digital art and other media. It's all good. For a second effort in a new method after all that time it is still pretty remakable. I like the Larson. When I have time I will visit his site. Thanks for sharing.